Photos: Everett Collection; Illustration: Don Pearsall

Summer is finally here, and nothing evokes the spirit of the season like sand, sun, sweat, and surf. Here, in DECIDER’s A Brief History of Beach Movies, critic Glenn Kenny charts the evolution of one of the most iconic and idiosyncratic genres in cinema… Starting with the first blush of innocent fun on the beach.

In the 1941 romantic comedy The Devil And Miss Jones (not, under any circumstances, to be confused with the notorious 1973 adult film The Devil In Miss Jones), perky Jean Arthur, as a department store clerk, gets her curmudgeonly boss Charles Coburn to see the glory of common humanity by taking him on a trip to Coney Island. Similarly, in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life, forever companions Juanita Moore and Lana Turner meet each other while taking their daughters on trips to the beach.

As the 1950s turned to the 1960s, teen culture emerged, partially out of economic good times that provided kids still living more or less at home with a certain autonomy. And what does every autonomous being want to get up to when summer comes? The water. Preferably ocean water. Which is part of how the beach movie became a cultural phenomenon. The first crop of such flicks celebrated youth and innocence, sometimes with songs accompanying the action. And when a low-budget studio teamed a Top 40 crooner on the wane (supplanted by Beatlemania) and a former Disney child star, a meme was born. It was called “Frankie and Annette.”

Sandra Dee pines for Cliff Robertson in ‘Gidget.’ Photo: Everett Collection

But first there was Gidget, in 1959. The teenage surfer of the title — the nickname is a portmanteau word, combining “girl” and “midget,” confirmed in the theme song that states she “looks about four foot three” — originated in books by Fredrick Kohner, a Czech immigrant was a novelist and screenwriter in both German and American film. He based the character on his daughter, who fell in with a crowd of eventually legendary real-life surfers. (Incidentally, Frederick’s brother, Paul Kohner, was the father of Susan Kohner, an actress — in Imitation of Life, among others — who married fashion designer John Weitz and became mother of Chris and Paul Weitz, who went on to create a non-beach teen film franchise called American Pie. Whew.)

Surprisingly frank in its discussions of sex — the term “jailbait caper” turns up in the dialogue — the movie sees adorable Sandra Dee as the title character almost desperate to lose her virginity. (You may remember the mention of Ms. Dee, and what she was lousy with, from Grease.) She’s drawn not only to Cliff Robertson’s age-inappropriate beach bum, “The Big Kahuna,” but to his more copacetic (to some extent) disciple “Moondoggie,” played by James Darren. The plot is pretty much along the same lines as 1948’s A Date With Judy, in which a teen infatuated with an older guy learns what’s good for her. Director Paul Wendkos had, prior to this, made an eccentric noir called The Burglar, but seems to have found his true calling here; he directed two sequels. Look for future Batgirl Yvonne Craig as one of Gidge’s more well-developed cronies.  The first Gidget sequel stayed on the beach, only in Hawaii rather than California. The next, Gidget Goes To Rome, has no aquatic action unless you count the Trevi Fountain.

Frankie Avalon cavorts with a young Linda Evans in ‘Beach Blanket Bingo.’ Photo: Everett Collection

But fear not, indie studio American International Pictures was ready to step into the breach beginning with 1963’s Beach Party, teaming one-time Disney Mouseketeer Annette Funicello with former teen crooner Frankie Avalon (whose hits included “Venus” among others). As the series went on, it incorporated variations of setting and climate (as in Ski Party, which featured a musical appearance from James Brown) and also added celebrity cameos that verged on the non sequitur. See 1965’s Beach Blanket Bingo in which silent great Buster Keaton is reduced to chasing bathing beauties. Then there’s gossip columnist Earl Wilson dropping his then-famed catchphrase, “That’s Earl, brother.” And a bunch of scenes in which Annette tells Frankie that he’s not getting any until he puts a ring on it. 

These aren’t particularly distinguished films but their cameo and music talents can be fascinating. 1965’s A Swingin’ Summer features Raquel Welch as a bespectacled bookworm who of course wows the boys when she turns up in a bikini. The Girls on the Beach (1965) directed by action serial maestro and Tarantino fave William Witney (who doesn’t mention it in his autobiography) features the Beach Boys; this is their only “beach movie” appearance. The band and singer Lesley Gore are the only names in this no-star cast, unless Lana Wood in a gold lame bikini counts. The title girls blow up their home chem lab trying to perfect a confection in a scene that anticipates Rock and Roll High School a decade and change later. The movie itself grows weirdly lunatic, with the guys dressing in drag and some labored Beatles references in the plot. (These movies had a real problem with the Beatles; in 1963’s Bikini Beach a green-with-envy Avalon tries to lampoon them by masquerading as a rocker called “The Potato Bug.”)

A couple of love birds on the beach in ‘Beach Ball.’ Photo: Everett Collection

The littler-known Beach Ball showcases The Supremes, The Four Seasons, The Righteous Brothers, and most fascinatingly, The Walker Brothers.  Check out a blonde Scott Walker, forty years before teaming up with drone metal icons Sunn 0))), exhorting the dancing boys and girls to “Do The Jerk.” And Don’t Make Waves, a 1967 attempt at a grown-up beach movie from the director of The Sweet Smell of Success, starring Tony Curtis, Claudia Cardinale, and Sharon Tate, is a Malibu variation of La Ronde with a theme song by The Byrds. 

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface, published by Hanover Square Press, and now available for at a bookstore near you.